In our Sunday, April 10 teaching we examined two key ingredients of any false teaching – who we are spiritually, and how we are made right (justified) with God. The first point, who we are spiritually, centers on the idea of our spiritual condition. All false teaching minimizes the spiritual condition of humanity to lessen or remove the reality that we are sinners who have offended a Holy God and are in critical need of forgiveness. Although difficult, we must address anyone who would say they represent God’s church, yet oppose God’s Word (see Isa. 64:6; Ecc. 7:20; Matt. 5:3,20; Rom.3:10,23; 5:8; Gal.3:22; I Tim.1:3-6, 4:6; 2 Tim.1:13,3:2; Tit. 1:9).
In our teaching, we played a segment of an interview with Robert Schuller, pastor of the 12,000 member Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove California. In the clip, Dr. Schuller indicates that it is a mistake to preach on the concept that we are sinners and not inherently good. What you didn’t hear is that Dr. Schuller walked out during the interview since he was disgusted that he had not received the questions that were going to be asked of him in advance. It seems that Dr. Schuller did not like being put on the other end of Biblical truth and then, did the next best thing to answering the question, he left.
Is this a new position for Dr. Schuller? No. In the March 18, 1985 edition of Time magazine, Dr. Schuller said the following:
“I don’t think anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality and, hence, counterproductive to the evangelism enterprise than the often crude, uncouth, and unchristian strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition.”
Is this teaching wrong? Yes. Is Dr. Schuller guilty of heresy? Yes. Is Dr. Schuller leading millions of people everyday through his “Hour of Power” broadcast into a false gospel? Absolutely. We need to pray to ask God to have mercy and grant Dr. Schuller repentance of his teaching that humanity is essentially good. We also need to pray that Dr. Schuller would abandon his self-righteous life and trust Christ to save him from his sins. Without a realization of need for a Savior from sins, there is no Gospel, there is no hope, there is just the illusion of a false teacher.
Martin Luther, responding to the Roman Catholic backlash against the Reformation, wrote the following (emphases mine):
Martin Luther, Concerning Christian Liberty: Letter of Martin Luther to Pope Leo X
The New Catholic Dictionary (and Luther was, after all, a Catholic to start with) defines “impiety” this way: “Any act committed against the reverence due to God, or to a person or thing referring to God. The principal forms of impiety are: atheism, blasphemy, sacrilege, simony, and perjury.”
I appreciate the careful way in which you called out the false teachers in this week’s message: it is clear that you do so, to use Luther’s words, “on account, not of their bad morals, but of their impiety.”
Whew! – this is tough stuff. It goes to show that loving (or even merely tolerating) people doesn’t mean you owe an ounce of deference to their ideas or doctrines.
Besides, loving others as ourselves was only called out as the second-greatest commandment.
Not to get off the subject, but the command to love one another is not any lesser than of a command than to love God with all you are.
But then again, you being sarcastic, weren’t you?
Absolutely true on both cases. I feel more than sarcastic, I am often mad and frustrated at the damage done by false teaching. There are millions of people who swallow this drivel hook, line, and sinker! That, my friend, is frustrating!